The ways people go about researching and booking a holiday have changed dramatically over the last few years.

More and more people are turning to the internet to book their holidays. Of these, very few people log into a computer and automatically know where to go.

More than 99% of the online population uses a search engine to help them find what they are looking for.

There are numerous search engines available. The biggest are Bing, Yahoo and, of course, the undisputed King of search - Google.

The numbers and growth behind the use of search engines is just amazing.

There are currently more than 400 million daily searches being carried out on Google and this number is increasing rapidly.

How to get found by search engines

People go online and they search by using what is known as keywords. Keywords are what people type into a search engine when searching.

For example, someone looking for a holiday Villa in Spain, would go onto Google for and type in ‘Holiday villa in Spain’ or possibly something less ‘targeted’ like ‘holiday rentals in Spain’

Keywords should always be the starting point for your online search engine optimization (SEO). Targeting the ‘right’ keywords is without a doubt the most important part of any SEO strategy.

Taking the example above, the results displayed will include websites that have those keywords present. If your holiday home description does not include those keywords, it is unlikely your advert will show up in the results.

Anticipate how people will find you

It is important to anticipate what keywords people will be using when looking for a property similar to yours. If you have a villa with a swimming pool. Be sure to use the words ‘Villa with a swimming pool’ at least once in your description.

As a general rule, we recommend picking three or four keywords and mentioning them throughout your property description. It is important not to go overboard with this.

‘Keyword stuffing,’ is frowned upon by Google and can lead to penalizations. It is also important to bear in mind that ultimately a person is going to reading your description and that person is going to be the one who decides whether or not to rent your property. As such the description needs to be appealing to human readers, not just search engine robots.

The best keywords to focus on are on the type of property (Villa, apartment, finca etc), the area (town, location – beachfront etc) and the facilities (private swimming pool, large garden, tennis courts etc)

Placing your keywords

You can divide your property description into two main sections. The title tag and the body of the text. It is a good idea to try and use keywords in both.

You have less space in the title tag, so it needs to be used carefully. Aiming for 40 characters is good practice. Stick to the essentials.

A good title tag, for example, would be ‘Two bedroomed beachfront flat in Malaga’ you have included the main selling and descriptive points, using keywords and all in under 40 characters.

The main body of text allows more scope for changing and including different keywords. A good idea is alter the keywords a bit, in the above example ‘beachfront’ could easily be mentioned as ‘frontline’ beach, ‘flat’ as ‘apartment’ etc, people may be searching for the same things but using different variations of the word.

Original content

Always use original content. Never copy and paste descriptions of your property, or anyone else’s. Even if you are advertising the same property on different websites, it is always best to use unique content for each one. Search engines will always place more emphasis on something that is unique and well written.

Put yourself in the potential holidaymaker’s position - how would you look for holiday home? What keywords would you use to find it? Does this match what you have at the moment?

Search engine optimization

Search engine optimization is an art and a continual process. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of factors that come into play when trying to get to the top of organic listings. Allow professionals to do that work for you.

Spain holiday appears on the first page of Google for more than 3,000 keywords in ten different languages. We also invest heavily in paid PPC pay per click (PPC) keywords. We endeavor to make your holiday rental in Spain be found.